full context of the story, so we naturally tend to read
its attitude toward the subject as neutral. Thus
when Miss Wonderly (Mary Astor) introduces
herself to Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) at the
beginning of John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon
(1941; cinematographer: Arthur Edeson), the direc-
tor uses an omniscient eye-level camera to estab-
lish a neutral client–detective relationship that
seems to be what both characters want. This effect
deliberately deceives us, as we learn only later in
the film when we discover that Miss Wonderly is
not the innocent person she claims to be (as the
eye-level angle suggested).
By contrast, an eye-level shot that occurs in The
Grifters(1990; cinematographer: Oliver Stapleton),
comes later in the movie, after the director,
Stephen Frears, has established a narrative con-
text for interpreting his characters and their situa-
tion. From the beginning of the film, we know that
Lilly Dillon (Anjelica Huston) and her son, Roy
(John Cusack), are grifters, or con artists. After an
eight-year estrangement they meet again, but each
still regards suspiciously everything the other says
or does. The eye-level shot reveals the hollow dia-
logue and tension of their reunion and is thus
ironic, since they know, as we do, that their rela-
tionship is off balance (not “on the level”).High Angle A high-angle shot(also called a
high shotor down shot) is made with the camera
above the action and typically implies the
observer’s sense of superiority to the subject being
photographed. In Rouben Mamoulian’s Love Me
Tonight (1932; cinematographer: Victor Milner),
Maurice Courtelin (Maurice Chevalier) finally
admits to Princess Jeanette (Jeanette MacDonald)
that he is not an aristocrat, but rather an ordinary
tailor. Although the princess loves him, she runs
from the room in confusion, and the camera looks
down on Maurice, who is now left to assess his
reduced status with the symbolic measuring tape
in his hands.
Sometimes, however, a high-angle shot can be
used to play against its traditional implications. In
Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest(1959; cine-
matographer: Robert Burks), one of the villains,
Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), tells his collabo-
rator, Leonard (Martin Landau), that he is taking
his mistress, Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), for a
trip on his private plane. Vandamm knows that
Kendall is part of an American spy ring that has
discovered his selling of government secrets to the
enemy, and he plans to kill her by pushing her out
of the aircraft. As he speaks, the crane-mounted
camera rises to a very high angle looking down at
the two men, and Vandamm concludes, “This mat-
ter is best disposed of from a great height. Over
water.” The overall effect of this shot depends com-
pletely on this unconventional use of the high angle:
it does not imply superiority, but rather empha-
sizes Vandamm’s deadly plan. Its ironic, humorous
effect depends as well on James Mason’s wry deliv-
ery of these lines.Low Angle A low-angle shot(or low shot) is
made with the camera below the action and typi-
cally places the observer in the position of feeling
helpless in the presence of an obviously superior
force, as when we look up at King Kong on the
Empire State Building or up at the shark from the
underwater camera’s point of view in Jaws. In Spike
Lee’s Do the Right Thing(1989; cinematographer:260 CHAPTER 6 CINEMATOGRAPHY
Eye-level shotIn John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon(1941;
cinematographer: Arthur Edeson), this eye-level shot, used
throughout the initial meeting of Miss Wonderly (Mary Astor)
and Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), leads us to the false
belief that the facts of their meeting are “on the level.”